According to the post, he may be respected, but has been labeled unethical: "This [relationship with Microsoft] could be seen as a clear conflict of interest and should have been declared by the relevant parties at that meeting."

When crap like this is pulled there needs to be a demerit system that now weighs more heavily against the side which was found to behaving unethically. Like Proprietary software has 120 points, Open Source alternatives 119. However, due to the unethical stunt you pulled we award you 50 demerits. So the final score is Open Source 119, Proprietary 70. We will therefore use open source whenever it is feasible.

When crap like this is pulled there needs to be a demerit system that now weighs more heavily against the side which was found to behaving unethically.

There isn't a point system. However, there's a much more simple thing, and it's actually the law already. Products from companies involved in corruption should be excluded from all governmental contracts for a period of time as happened for example to Boeing in the USA. If Microsoft products were suspended for e.g. 10 years, this would be a salutory lesson for all involved in corruption.

This is basically what Microsoft have always done, though, isn't it? There was even an internal memo describing the usefulness of this particular tactic - quietly getting a Microsoft stooge as the moderator of the discussion - in I think the Halloween documents.

It was Pamela Jones of Groklaw who revealed the existence of "The Slog" from the Comes vs. Microsoft case documents. On reading of this latest conflict-of-interest issue with Hopkirk, PJ's February 17, 2008 article is eerily familiar...

Reality here is the bill for the cost of the effort to date should be forwarded to M$ as it were their interests that were deceitfully forwarded, M$ can then choose whether or not to get the 'bad' doctor to pay for it or not.

That companies can try this stuff on again and again, without any penalty is getting way out of hand. Some real penalties should be applied especially when they stooge up government based investigations that will likely lead to legislation.

"not been paid to specifically write their response to the Open Standards consultation but he is engaged to help them tease out the issues"

Wow, what a bunch of political weasel wording by Hopkirk. It all depends on how "specific" Hopkirk defines "specifically." That's not just mere conflict of interest. That's conflict of interest and then still lying about it.

That's not the right way to look at this. You can't call the facilitator having consulted for Microsoft a "conflict of interest" without that applying equally to someone who benefits from the adoption of truly open standards.

The problem here is that Dr. Hopkirk didn't *disclose* his ties to Microsoft. I give Dr. Hopkirk the benefit of the doubt that he attempted to steer the roundtable impartially -- to the best of his knowledge. But he concealed information that was important for *other* people to make a

I've worked in Local Government IT on an account for a London Borough for over 12 years, both on the client and contractor side.It seems pretty much mandatory that as much public money as possible spent on IT is funnelled straight to Redmond.It's therefore not really surprising that they should invite someone strongly connected with Microsoft to discuss Open Source.

Your comment is actually insightful, as anyone who has tried to install a pirated version of Windows 7 has discovered (i.e., if we define "free" as in beer, and "open" as in "wide open for piracy").

OTOH, MS might very well be monitoring the IP addresses of update requests and scanning them for fixed IPs assigned to businesses so that they can refer evidence of piracy by commercial entities to the proper BSA national branch office.

Frankly, MS has a stake that people pirate their OS and tools for home use, be

The one positive out of this, is the reaction of the Cabinet Office deputy CIO, Liam Maxwell. When he heard about the problem, he confronted Hopkirk, then having heard his account fired him for not declaring his conflict of interest, binned the responses he had facilitated, and extended the consultation.
It seems we have one civil servant who is determined that this consultation will be held fairly. So all our UK readers now have another 5 weeks to get their responses in: http://consultation.cabinetoffice. [cabinetoffice.gov.uk]